Chapter 1: Shotgun Schemes: The Brother at the Door
The neon glow from the Sigma Chi house bled through the cheap blinds, painting stripes of lurid pink and electric blue across Jamie’s economics textbook. It was a lost cause. The bass from next door vibrated through the cinderblock wall, a persistent, arrhythmic thump that made the words on monetary policy swim before her eyes. She pushed her glasses up her nose and sighed, the sound swallowed by the muffled shriek of laughter from outside. A fortress of knowledge, her dorm room—currently under siege.
The door flew open without a knock, and a whirlwind named Katie exploded into the space, smelling of cheap vodka and expensive perfume. “Weapon of mass destruction, acquired!” she announced, holding up a lone shot glass filled with clear liquid.
Jamie blinked, her brain slowly shifting gears from supply-side curves to her best friend’s manic energy. “Is that from the party? Katie, it’s a Tuesday.”
“And your brother leaves for his mysterious ‘business trip’ to Naples in,” she checked her diamond-encrusted watch, a gift from a former suitor Luca had politely discouraged, “three hours. Which means his creepy, hyper-vigilant watch over you goes on temporary hiatus. The math is simple, Jam. This,” she shoved the shot into Jamie’s hand, “is our first variable.”
“I don’t think my brother’s protection is a linear equation,” Jamie muttered, but she took the glass. The liquid smelled like rubbing alcohol and poor decisions.
Katie perched on the edge of the cluttered desk, knocking over a stack of notecards. “Listen. Vincent and Marco are running the club while he’s gone. Which means they’ll be around. Which means you will be around. Which means you finally use all that… theory you’ve been collecting.” She waggled her eyebrows.
Jamie felt a flush creep up her neck. Her ‘theory’ was a carefully curated, secretly read collection of articles and, yes, books about dynamics, about confidence, about the subtle art of not being invisible. It was one thing to read about submission and dominance in the abstract, quite another to apply it to the two men who had, since she was sixteen, existed in her mind as monuments of impossible cool. Vincent with his quiet, observing intensity, and Marco with his easy, devastating grin. They were Luca’s right and left hands, part of the family furniture, and they looked at her like she was a piece of precious, breakable china. A nonsexual sibling.
“He told them to ‘take care of me,’ Katie,” Jamie said, despair coloring her voice. “He used the baby-sitter tone. I’m a pre-med major, not a potted plant.”
“Exactly! So we change the narrative. We show them you’re not a kid. You’re a woman. A woman who knows what she wants.” Katie leaned in, her voice dropping to a conspiratorial hiss. “Your brother’s leaving tonight—this is our shot to make you irresistible. Starting with a little liquid courage.”
Jamie stared at the shot. The party lights pulsed, the bass thumped. Somewhere in the city, Vincent and Marco were probably doing something incredibly adult and competent. Her own life smelled of highlighter ink and dorm-room dust. A spark of that hidden fire flickered in her gut, fierce and sudden. She was tired of being the sheltered bookworm, the kid sister, the responsibility.
“Okay,” she said, her voice quieter than she intended.
“Yes!” Katie fist-pumped the air.
“Okay what?” The voice from the doorway was like a bucket of ice water.
Jamie jerked, the shot sloshing over her fingers. Luca filled the frame, his suit impeccable even at this hour, his expression a masterpiece of subdued displeasure. His eyes, the same green as hers but infinitely harder, scanned the room—the shot glass, Katie’s guilty leap off the desk, Jamie’s textbook sprawled open.
“Luca!” Jamie squeaked, hastily setting the glass down. “I thought you’d left for the airport.”
“Flight’s delayed. Wanted to check in.” His gaze settled on Katie. “Katherine.”
“Luca,” Katie chirped, recovering with unnerving speed. A faint blush graced her cheeks, but her smile was bright and challenging. “Just helping Jamie relax. Pre-med is a beast.”
“I’m sure.” His tone suggested he was sure of something else entirely. He looked back at Jamie. “We need to talk. Privately.”
Katie took the hint, scooping up her tiny sequined purse. “I’ll be next door if you need me, Jam. Remember the plan!” She shot Jamie a significant look and slipped past Luca with a whisper of fabric and a cloud of perfume.
Luca closed the door softly behind her. The room felt suddenly, profoundly smaller.
“You’re not going to any parties while I’m gone,” he stated, moving to lean against her dresser. He crossed his arms, the gesture effortlessly authoritative.
“I wasn’t planning—”
“Vincent and Marco will be checking on you.Regularly. You give them no trouble. You go to class, you come home, you study. You need anything—anything—you call them. Not your friend Katie, who seems to have a death wish.” He pinched the bridge of his nose. “I don’t like leaving you.”
“I’m twenty-three, Luca. Not thirteen.”
“And this world is a hell of a lot more dangerous than your organic chem lab.” He pushed off the dresser and came to stand before her. The stern don facade cracked, just for a second, revealing the big brother who used to read her stories when she had nightmares. “You’re all I’ve got, Jam-Jam. I just need to know you’re safe.”
The old nickname disarmed her. She looked down at her hands, still sticky from the vodka. “I’ll be safe. I promise.”
He nodded, seeming to accept this. He reached out and tucked a strand of her strawberry-blonde hair behind her ear, a rare gesture of affection. “Good. I’ve asked the boys to be… vigilant.”
Her heart did a complicated, pathetic flutter at the mention of ‘the boys’. “I know. You said.”
His phone buzzed. He glanced at it, his face settling back into its usual lines of controlled command. “That’s my ride. Two weeks. Be smart.” He headed for the door, then paused, his hand on the knob. He didn’t look back.“And Jamie? Vincent and Marco are my best friends. But they’re also my most dangerous men. Remember that.”
The door clicked shut.
The silence he left behind was different now. Heavier. Charged. The neon lights continued their silent parade across her walls.
Jamie looked at the abandoned shot glass. Then she looked at her reflection in the dark window—a pale face with too-big eyes, framed by messy hair and practical glasses. The girl who followed the rules. The responsibility.
She picked up the shot glass.
Katie’s words echoed in the new silence. This is our shot to make you irresistible.
With a tremor that was equal parts terror and exhilaration, she lifted the glass to her lips. The vodka burned a path of defiance down her throat. She coughed, setting the glass down with a sharp click.
The plan was insane. The objects of her affection were allegedly dangerous. Her brother was terrifying.
But for the first time in her life, the shell around her felt thin.Crackable. Outside, the party roared on, a promise of chaos and life. Inside, Jamie Bentley, bookworm and sheltered sister, wiped her mouth with the back of her hand, and a slow, determined smile touched her lips.
Two weeks. That was all the time she had.K
That was all the time she had.
The shot’s fire had settled into a low, buzzing warmth in her veins, fueling a resolve that felt foreign in her hands. Katie was back in the room before the echo of Luca’s departure had fully faded, her eyes alight with strategic triumph.
“Operation Shift the Paradigm is a go,” Katie declared, flinging open Jamie’s closet door. She surveyed the contents—rows of comfortable sweaters, sensible jeans, and stacks of well-worn t-shirts—with a critical grimace. “Okay. We have our work cut out for us.”
“It’s not that bad,” Jamie muttered, self-consciously touching her ponytail.
“Jamie, your lingerie is probably all cotton and from a multi-pack. We’re not working with ‘not that bad.’ We’re working with a transformation.” Katie began rifling through her own oversized bag, pulling out items like a magician. A slip of black silk. A pair of heels so high they looked like weapons. A tube of red lipstick. “Your brother thinks you’re a fragile book in a climate-controlled library. We’re going to show him—and more importantly, show them—that you’re a first-edition noir thriller.”
An hour later, Jamie stared at her reflection and didn’t recognize herself. The black dress was Katie’s, a simple sheath that somehow managed to cling and flow at once, ending mid-thigh. It was stark against her fair skin. The heels had forced her posture into something unfamiliar, a straight-backed awareness of her own height. Katie had worked some kind of witchcraft with a curling iron, turning her long hair into a cascade of waves that looked deliberately tousled, and the red lipstick was a shocking, vivid statement on her face.
“The glasses,” Katie said, hand outstretched.
“I can’t see,” Jamie protested, blinking at her blurred reflection.
“You don’t need to see. You need to be seen. Give.” Reluctantly, Jamie handed them over. The world softened into a haze of colorful blurs and bright lights. “Perfect. A little mysterious, a little untouchable. Now, you’re not Jamie the pre-med student. You’re… Jay. The girl who belongs somewhere interesting.”
“Where is this interesting place, exactly?” Jamie asked, her voice wobbly as she took a tentative step. The floor felt unstable.
“Where Vincent and Marco will be,” Katie said, grinning. “Your brother’s club. The Grotto.”
A cold spike of pure terror lanced through Jamie’s buzz. “The club? Katie, we can’t. Luca would—“
“Luca is over the Atlantic Ocean by now. And his instructions were for them to check on you at your dorm. Not to guard the club from you. It’s a semantic loophole. We’re exploiting it.” Katie checked her phone. “Car’s here. And I called in a favor with the guy at the VIP door. He owes me for… well, it doesn’t matter. He’ll let us in.”
The ride downtown was a blur of neon and anxiety. Jamie felt exposed, the dress like a second skin under the watchful gaze of the city night. The Grotto wasn’t signposted. It was a sleek, unmarked door of darkened bronze set between a bespoke tailor and a gallery, in a part of town where money whispered instead of shouted. A massive man in a tailored suit stood sentry, his expression impenetrable.
Katie sailed up to him, a vision of confident chaos in gold lamé. “Hey, Silas. Plus one.”
Silas’s eyes, sharp and assessing, slid over Katie and then landed on Jamie. They lingered. A flicker of confusion, then recognition crossed his stoic features. He knew her. He’d driven her home from the library last semester when Luca had been tied up. His eyes widened a fraction.
Jamie held her breath, her heart hammering against the black silk.
Silas’s gaze darted to Katie, then back to Jamie’s face, now artfully obscured by the fall of her hair and the lack of her trademark glasses. He saw the plea in Jamie’s blurred eyes, the slight, desperate shake of her head. He was Luca’s man, loyal to a fault. But he was also, Jamie realized, a man who understood the unspoken rules of a place like this. Discretion was the highest currency.
After a beat that felt like an eternity, he gave a single, almost imperceptible nod. He stepped aside and opened the door.
A wall of sound, deep and textured, enveloped them first. Not the pounding bass of the frat house, but a thrumming, sensual electronica that vibrated in the floor. The air was cool, scented with bergamot, sandalwood, and something else—clean, metallic, like rain on stone.
The interior was a study in shadow and polished surfaces. The main room was a wide, circular space with tiers of secluded booths lining the walls, their interiors hidden by sheer curtains of chainmail. A central bar, lit from within like a slab of glowing ice, was the only source of direct light. Elsewhere, pinspots highlighted isolated scenes: a couple dancing close in a corner, the intricate lacing of a corset on another, the attentive posture of a server in black delivering a bottle to a curtained alcove. The crowd was a murmur of low conversation and soft laughter, the clink of crystal. It was elegant. It was intense. It was nothing like Jamie had imagined.
Katie leaned in, her voice barely audible over the music. “See? Civilization. Now, remember the plan. We observe. We circulate. We look effortlessly alluring and available. We do not gawk.”
But Jamie was gawking. Her myopia turned the scene into a beautiful, confusing dream. Shapes and movements suggested more than she could see clearly, which somehow made it all more potent. The sense of illicit freedom was intoxicating. She was inside Luca’s other world, the one he kept so carefully separate from her. And somewhere in this labyrinth of shadow and suggestion were Vincent and Marco.
A server glided past with a tray of champagne flutes. Katie snagged two, handing one to Jamie. “To semantic loopholes,” she whispered, clinking their glasses.
As Jamie lifted the flute to her lips, her eyes adjusted slightly to the dim light. Across the room, near the entrance to a darker, curtained hallway, she saw him.
Vincent.
He leaned against the wall, a stillness amidst the flow. He was dressed in a dark suit, no tie, his shirt open at the collar. In his hands, he slowly turned a single, heavy crystal tumbler, watching the ice swirl. He was observing the room, his gaze a slow, scanning sweep. It was a look of ownership, of assessment.
And then that gaze passed over the space where she stood.
It stopped. It backtracked. It settled on her.
Even across the room, through the blur, she felt the weight of his attention. His head tilted a fraction, a predator catching an unexpected scent. He straightened from his slouch, his body telegraphing a sudden, sharp focus. He knew that dress wasn’t hers. He knew that silhouette. But the hair, the lack of glasses, the defiant set of her shoulders in those heels—it was just enough to make him question.
He took a step forward.
Jamie’s breath caught. The plan, the theory, the liquid courage—it all crystallized into this single, heart-stopping moment. She didn’t look away. She held his obscured gaze, took a slow sip of her champagne, and let a small, secret smile touch her red lips.
The game, she realized with a dizzying rush, had just begun.
The game, she realized with a dizzying rush, had just begun.
Vincent didn’t walk so much as materialize out of the shadows, with Marco appearing a half-step behind his shoulder like a grinning, more dangerous echo. They moved through the crowd with a silent authority that parted the sea of bodies without a word.
“Jamie.”
Her name from Vincent’s lips wasn’t a question. It was a flat, disbelieving statement. Up close, he was even more intense. His dark eyes scanned her—the dress, the heels, the lips—with a speed that felt surgical. His expression was unreadable, but a muscle ticked in his jaw.
Marco let out a low whistle, his smile not quite reaching his eyes. “Whoa. Katie, what’s the special occasion? Luca’s wheels haven’t even hit tarmac yet.”
Katie, to her credit, didn’t flinch. She took a deliberate sip of champagne. “We’re adults, Marco. Having a drink.”
“Not here, you’re not,” Vincent said, his voice quiet but slicing cleanly through the ambient music. He took Jamie’s glass from her hand, his fingers brushing hers. A spark, hot and sharp, shot up her arm. “You two. With us. Now.”
It wasn’t an invitation. Marco’s hand settled lightly on Katie’s lower back, guiding her forward before she could protest. Vincent’s presence beside Jamie was an unyielding wall, ushering her away from the main floor. They moved past the bar, through a discreet archway, and down a quieter corridor lined with dark wood doors.
Vincent opened the last one on the left.
It was a private lounge, soundproofed, all plush velvet banquettes and low lighting. A sanctuary, or a holding cell. He ushered them inside and closed the door, the click of the latch sounding final.
“What,” Vincent began, turning to face them, his arms crossed over his chest, “are you doing here?”
Marco leaned against the door, blocking the exit, his usual playful demeanor replaced by a look of stern concern. “Luca would have a coronary. And then he’d have our heads. Silas let you in? I’m firing him.”
“Don’t you dare,” Katie fired back, crossing her arms. “I bullshitted him. It’s on me. Jamie just needed a night out.”
Vincent’s gaze never left Jamie. “You look… different.” The way he said it wasn’t a compliment. It was an accusation.
Jamie’s heart hammered against her ribs. The blur without her glasses made their forms softer, but their energy was razor-sharp. She forced her voice not to shake. “I am different.”
A tense silence filled the room, thick enough to choke on.
Then Katie sighed dramatically, throwing her hands up. “Okay, fine! You caught us. The jig is up.” She grabbed her tiny purse from the table. “I’m out. My work here is done.” She shot Jamie a look that was pure, unadulterated mischief. “Have fun, bestie. Remember the plan.”
And before Jamie could process it, Katie darted past Marco, who was too surprised to stop her. She yanked the door open and was gone, her heels clicking a rapid retreat down the hall.
The door swung shut.
Jamie was alone with them.
The air in the room compressed, growing heavier, hotter. Marco pushed off the door, running a hand through his hair. “What plan, Jamie? What is she talking about?”
Vincent just stared, waiting.
This was it. The theory meeting the brutal, breathtaking reality. Every carefully rehearsed line evaporated from Jamie’s mind. She was just a girl in an alien dress, standing in a room with the two men who had starred in every one of her secret fantasies for years. The words tumbled out, raw and unvarnished.
“I want you to teach me.”
Marco blinked. “Teach you what? Organic chemistry? Because I barely passed that.”
“No.” She swallowed, forcing her green eyes to meet Vincent’s dark, assessing ones, then Marco’s confused blue. “About sex. I want you to teach me about sex.”
The silence that followed was absolute. The distant thrum of the club’s music vanished. There was only the sound of her own rushed breath and the loud, frantic pounding of her blood in her ears.
Marco’s mouth actually dropped open. Vincent didn’t move a millimeter, but his eyes deepened, his focus on her becoming so absolute it felt like a physical touch.
“Explain,” Vincent said, the single word a soft command.
“I’m… inexperienced. And I’m tired of it. I like someone. Actually, I like two… someones. And I want to be ready. I want to know what I’m doing. I don’t want to be the… the sheltered bookworm anymore.” The confession spilled out of her, fueled by a courage she didn’t know she had. “You’re the only ones I trust. Luca trusts you with everything. I… I trust you with this.”
Marco found his voice first, a strangled half-laugh. “Jamie, honey, no. That’s a million miles past no. Luca would flay us alive and use our skin for sofa upholstery.”
“Luca isn’t here,” she said, and the truth of it hung in the air, dangerous and seductive.
Vincent finally uncrossed his arms. He took a single step toward her, closing the distance. He studied her face, her parted red lips, the defiant lift of her chin. “Who are the two guys?”
She shook her head, her hair swishing over her shoulders. “I can’t tell you that.”
“Why not?”
“Because it doesn’t matter. This isn’t about them. It’s about me. My choice.” She took a shaky step toward him, meeting his gaze head-on in her blurred world. “Are you going to help me or not?”
Marco let out a low whistle again, this one full of stunned admiration. “Damn, J. Look at you.”
Vincent was still, a statue of conflicted will. His loyalty to Luca warred with something else in his expression—a flicker of intrigue, of a challenge accepted. He saw the fire she’d always hidden. He was seeing it now, and it was aimed directly at him.
He reached out, his fingers hovering just beside her cheek, not touching her. “This is a very bad idea, Jamie.”
“I know,” she whispered, her breath catching.
His hand fell back to his side. He looked at Marco, a silent conversation passing between them in a split second. Marco gave a minute, helpless shrug, a grin slowly spreading across his face despite himself.
Vincent looked back at her, his decision made. “You don’t get to know who they are. But you want lessons.” His voice was low, intimate, and utterly serious. “Fine. Rule one: this stays between us. Rule two: we set the terms. Rule three: you can back out anytime. But we stop… anytime we say.”
Jamie’s knees felt weak. This was really happening. She nodded, a quick, sharp movement.
“Okay,” she breathed.
“Okay,” Vincent echoed, the word a vow and a threat all at once.